Dynamic Subspace

Category: Science Fiction

  • 2012 Retrospective: My Big Year in Review

    2012 was a big year for me. I earned my PhD and I obtained my first job with that degree. I traveled for my research–first to California, then to Detroit,  and later to Germany. And, my wife, our cat, and I relocated from Ohio to Atlanta for my new job at Georgia Tech and we moved into my old house in Norcross, which had not sold during the past six years of graduate school.

    Unlike years past, I thought that it might be appropriate to jot down some of the milestones of 2012. Here are a few of those big things:

    • January 5-8: Y and I attended the MLA Convention for the first time and met up with a number of our friends and colleagues.
    • February: I spent two weeks in Riverside, California to read and research in the University of California, Riverside’s Eaton Collection in the Library’s Special Collections and Archives. This was an incredibly useful research trip that gave me the original research materials to complete my dissertation. Prior to leaving for my research trip–funded by the prestigious R. D. Mullen Fellowship–I had completed my dissertation’s theory chapter and compiled outlines for the other chapters.
    • April 2: I interviewed for the Marion L. Brittain Fellowship at my alma mater, Georgia Tech.
    • April 9: I delivered printed copies of my dissertation to my committee members. Since my trip to Riverside, I wrote approximately 68,000 words for a final word count of 81,948. Needless to say, I channeled the spirit of Philip K. Dick during this feverish time of hypergraphia. I could not have written this amount in such a short time had I not already created an efficient organization system for my research and deployed a number of digital humanities tools in my workflow. It was a terribly stressful time, because I drove myself relentlessly to complete it as quickly as possible. However, I would not have had it any other way.
    • April 19: I accepted an offer from Georgia Tech to join the rechristened School of Literature, Media, and Communication as a Brittain Fellow! My term of appointment is for three years.
    • May 15: I successfully defended my dissertation titled, “Brains, Minds, and Computers in Literary and Science Fiction Neuronarratives.” I came prepared with a suitcase of gear and donned with my only suit. During my opening statement, I showed off the ebook version of William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy on a Powerbook 145.
    • June 4-15: I met my parents in Norcross to work on my house. We replaced the main water line, repaired the plumbing, installed a new dishwasher, worked on the house, and cleaned the yard. Prior to this trip, I had maintained a vegetarian lifestyle. During my second day of using a grubbing hoe, I decided that I needed to eat meat again.
    • June 28-July 1: I attended the SFRA Conference in Detroit. This was my second and final meeting as the organization’s vice president. I presented my paper, “Philip K. Dick as Pioneer of the Brain Revolution.”
    • July 10: Y and I said goodbye to our friends in Kent and drove straight through to our new home in Norcross.
    • August 11: While I was unable to attend the ceremony, I officially graduated from Kent State University with the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
    • August 13-17: I attended new hire orientation at Georgia Tech, or as my cohort and I came to know it: Brittain Fellow Boot Camp.
    • August 21: I began teaching at Georgia Tech. I had three sections of ENGL1101. I designed my classes around the theme of becoming better communicators and professionals through neuroscience.
    • September 1: I began building the Lego Death Star set.
    • September 10: My Dad called me early in the morning to tell me that my Granny Ellis had passed away during the night. I wrote about it here.
    • November 15-18: I attended the first international Philip K. Dick conference at UT-Dortmund in Dortmund, Germany. I delivered a heavily revised version of my SFRA 2012 paper, “Philip K. Dick as Pioneer of the Brain Revolution.” The conference was a fantastic experience. I promise to write more about this in a separate post. In the meantime, you can see my pictures from Germany here.
    • November 22: My parents spent the Thanksgiving holiday with us in Norcross.
    • December 16: I filed my students’ grades and completed my first semester teaching at my alma mater. Looking backward, it was a tough semester, but it was extremely rewarding. I will reflect and write about this more soon.
    • December 17: I completed building the Lego Death Star set.
    • December 25: My parents spent Christmas with Y and me. They arrived bearing many gifts, and they took us out for more surprises. I believe that we all had a really wonderful time!
    • December 26+: I am preparing my teaching and publication materials. I also have a few job applications to complete. I have been using my chain saw and weed eater with saw blade a lot. When the weather and wind permit, I get to burn a small bit of excessive yard waste that I have to do something with.
    • December 29: Y and I met our friend (and fellow Georgia Tech alumna) Smitha for pastries and tea at Sweet Hut. We had a great time catching up.
    • December 30: Now, I am writing this post.

  • Trying to Come to Terms with Disney’s Acquisition of Lucasfilm and Star Wars in About 1200 Words

    Earlier today, I heard about Disney’s move to acquire Lucasfilm and the Star Wars franchise from George Lucas for $4.05 billion. At first, I was incredulous. I thought that this was an Internet hoax born of Hurricane Sandy regurgitating seawater onto a New England data server unfortunately left behind by the first responders. There is a nice press release and a photo of Lucas holding a pen above a nondescript piece of paper to prove otherwise.

    Gauging from folks’ responses on the web, Facebook, and Twitter, there seems to be a lot of confusion about this news. I certainly feel it myself. Looking at it through the cold logic of capitalism, Lucas is in the movie making business. What he might have once claimed was art or a manifestation of myth-made-modern was in fact simply a way to make lots of money. To borrow from Jay and Silent Bob, Star Wars (and Indiana Jones–a property apparently not of significant worth in the big scheme of things to Disney) was George Lucas’ “motherfucking movie check.” Lucas made it big–maybe it was part talent, part strategy, and part luck–and now, he has the opportunity to cash out. His ‘art’ was a tremendous investment that he has now leveraged to a lucrative payday. His selling the Star Wars/Lucasfilm property to Disney is an obvious choice. Disney has long partnered with Lucasfilm on part rides and merchandising. Additionally, Disney has shifted its attention toward acquisition of popular cultural properties to supplement what little remains of their own creative impetus. Disney bought Pixar, Steve Jobs’ insanely creative 3D animation studio in 2006 for $7.4 billion. Then, Disney purchased Marvel Comics for around the same price as Lucasfilm in 2009. Of course Disney would want Lucasfilm to join its portfolio of cultural holdings. As a result, a substantial amount of American culture is now owned by a single mega-corporation, Disney.

    Looking at the situation from my Star Wars fanish eyes, I am uneasy about this transaction. Despite Lucas’ attempts at destroying his legacy through the investments he made in the culturally bankrupt Star Wars prequels and the failed continuation of the Indiana Jones series in the “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” I have always identified him as being the embodiment of the Star Wars universe. Of course, he originated the idea and benevolently maintained despotic control over that idea (compared to Paramount and Star Trek–Lucas is a saint in permitting and occasionally encouraging fan films and fandom in general). I suppose it always seemed in my mind that the author/text|Lucas/Star Wars were signs signifying the same thing. They were shared significations within my mind about what ‘Star Wars’ was and represented. For example, it seems in retrospect that nearly every pre-prequels Star Wars conversation (certainly EVERY post-prequel conversation operates in this way) eventually would come back around to Lucas’ vision, intentions, mistakes, successes, etc. as it related to the narrative space and its possibilities within the imaginations of me and my friends. In a similar way to Steve Jobs and Apple, it doesn’t feel right to separate the author from the work. Certainly, I can imagine the Star Wars universe–its stories, technologies, and cultural context–without invoking the authorial ghost of Lucas. However, the authorial ghost seems ever near and inseparable from the thing (Stars Wars) itself.

    I can rationally think of how many billions of dollars George Lucas made from the Star Wars films among other things. I can rationally think about the exploited labor and anti-environmental effects of the merchandising that forms feedback cycle of the cultural consumption of ideas and things. I understand that Lucas, through his life, success, and business decisions, has enacted a real-life version of THX 1138. Despite all of these things, I cannot divorce myself from the love that I have of the Star Wars universe, its characters, its technologies (especially the Millennium Falcon–something that I imagine flying far more often than I might have any right to), and its wonder. Perhaps its this love for Star Wars that via the signification system transfers to Lucas in some weird way. He might have mucked up the possible narrative that I imagined and that my friends imagined for the Star Wars prequels, but my delight in Star Wars fills me with positive emotions that inform and shape my dichotomous respect and disdain for Lucas. While he and his vision do not define everything in my mind about Star Wars, his work and choices endowed me with an imaginative appreciation for Star Wars and a curiosity that far exceeds the bounds of “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” While I cannot give Lucas all the credit, I can safely say that Star Wars played a significant role in my being where and who I am today.

    Lucas made a significant choice today to sell Lucasfilm to Disney. Since Lucas is so interwoven into the very idea of Star Wars and its potential fulfilment in culture, I am left feeling uneasy about the transfer of his intellectual property to Disney, the cultural aggregator, shaper, and producer. If we want to think of this as one artist giving something to be reshaped and retold by another artist, then Lucas has given his property to Walt Disney’s zombie. The Disney of today is a shuffling undead shell of what it once was (and here I am not attempting to wax nostalgically as I did with Star Wars–Disney and his team of storytellers did fantastic things for culture and education through the era just before I was born–what followed after has by-and-large little to be desired). The Disney company today seeks the brains of other culture producers–Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm–on which it feeds and continues its ravenous lurching. I suppose it is this image on the edge of consciousness that disturbs me the most. I am saddened that Lucas gave up control of his property to producers and committees–a fate that I am not sure is any worse than his own revisionist impulse in the prequels. I admit that I am simply being romantic, but I believe that this romantic impulse for the bond between author and text represents something as deep perhaps as the supposed mythical qualities of the stories Lucas told us about the Skywalker clan.

    What does all of this mean for the future of Star Wars? Disney certainly didn’t wait for the ink to sign on the papers before they announced that a new Star Wars film would be released by 2015. Apparently, the acquisition included treatments that Lucas had been working on, but these will be re-developed by Disney. In a related note, I heard from today’s conference call that Disney CEO Iger said that Disney would focus on mobile gaming instead of big box/console games based on the Star Wars universe. This could have other repurcussions for the cultural impact and interactive engagement with its continuing stories. On this point, I am thinking about how these media are now interdependent and connected for conveying narrative and solidifying the cultural memory of those narratives. It would seem that Disney has hit the ground running with Star Wars, and I expect–for good or ill–a great many new things from Lucas’ universe. Unfortunately, he will not have any control over its further expansion, and I am doubtful that I will be as nearly as eager to be a participant in its expansion under the irksome visage of the Mouse.

  • Godspeed, Gary Stephen Thompson (1945-2012)

    Scanning from left to right in the adjacent picture from Christmastime 2008, you will see Bob Rainey, Mark Warbington, Paul Talamas, Gary Thompson, and me. This was the last time that I saw my friend Gary jovial and excited with life.

    On my way home to visit my family that year, I stopped through Atlanta to see the good friends that I made during my Mindspring and Georgia Tech undergraduate days. The five of us in the picture often met up at Mark’s house to tinker with computers (and technology in general), watch Red Green episodes (among many other things), and play Battlefield 1942 (with the Desert Combat patch).

    Since I had left Atlanta for graduate school at the University of Liverpool and Kent State University, I had not stayed in touch as much as I would have liked to. However, news has a strange way of finding its way to you through unexpected paths or random encounters. In Gary’s case, I knew that he continued with his annual participation in the Stone Mountain Highland Games, worked with another group of friends building an experimental kit airplane, and recently retired from General Electric where he was an highly experienced machinist.

    When I received a postdoc offer from Georgia Tech, I was excited about the prospect of catching up with my friends and hanging out again like we used to do at Mark’s. I realized that time and life had continued during the six years I was absent from Atlanta, but I did not expect the terrible event that coincided with my moving back to the area.

    (more…)

  • Back from Two Week Trip to UC-Riverside and the Eaton Science Fiction Collection

    From February 5 to 18, I researched in the Eaton Science Fiction Fiction and Fantasy Collection the University of California, Riverside‘s Tomas Rivera Library. As I mentioned last year, I was very appreciative to have won an R. D. Mullen Fellowship to fund my travel and accommodations for the research-oriented trip.

    Professor Rob Latham administers the fellowship and the science fiction work at UC-Riverside, which includes an annual SF symposium and the biannual Eaton Conference co-hosted with the library’s special collections. He is a gracious host, and I enjoyed our conversations while I was in Riverside.

    UC-Riverside is building a strong constellation in science fiction studies. Besides Latham at the helm, the university recently hired the science fiction writer Nalo Hopkinson into the creative writing program. Now, the university is conducting a new hire for a science fiction media studies person (I applied, but alas, I didn’t make the short list). I suspect more the university will continue to grow in this direction–at least, I hope that it does, because it can grow the SF program around the significant holdings of the library.

    The Eaton Collection is located on the fourth floor of the Thomas Rivera Library and its hours of operation are from 9:00am to 5:00pm Monday through Friday. I planned my trip so that I would have two full weeks to work in the special collections to conduct research for my dissertation chapter on Philip K. Dick, his 2-3-74 visions, and his health problems. In the event that I found as much material related to Dick’s work as possible, I also planned a contengency set of materials on the following chapter on William Gibson’s work.

    I am very happy to report that I achieved both goals and went a bit beyond my original set of documents thanks to cross referenced connections as well as new leads produced by my readings. Additionally, Reference Library Gwido Zlatkes turned me onto the two boxes of Philip K. Dick archival materials, which included some very cool autographed materials along with a full run of the Philip K. Dick Society Newsletter and other rare magazines and fanzines (including the November 6, 1975 Rolling Stone article).

    I began my research by reading the full thirty issue run of The Philip K. Dick Society Newsletter, which includes a double issue (#9/10) on cassette tape—one side being an interview conducted by Paul Williams with Dick and the other side Dick recording writing notes. The experience of fast-forwarding Dick’s posthumous canonization yielded more primary sources than I could have hoped for in letters and interviews. Interviews with Dick’s friends and former spouses also provide important corroboration and clarification of Dick’s sometimes-unreliable personal narratives.

    References in the Newsletter, combined with other research done before my visit to Riverside, led me to other interviews, notes, and reviews in fanzines including: The Alien Critic (later Science Fiction Review), Algol (later Starship), and The Patchin Review, and magazines including: Locus, Vertex, Science Fiction Eye, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Analog.

    After exhausting my leads in the collection related to Dick’s later fictions and personal life, I spent the last three days collecting research for the William Gibson chapter of my dissertation. I focused on the Locus reporting of Gibson’s success following the publication of Neuromancer in 1984 and later interviews with the writer in 1991 and 2003. I was pleased to find a fanzine co-edited by Gibson titled Genre Plat, but Gibson’s essay, “Blues for Horselover Fat” in the fanzine Wing Window provides the strongest evidence that I can use to bridge my chapters on Dick and Gibson.

    To fill out the time that I was in the library, I also found photographs and reports of past Science Fiction Research Association meetings, including the one hosted at Kent State University in the mid-1980s where Samuel R. Delany was honored with the Pilgrim Award.

    My UC-Riverside visit was punctuated with a weekend visit to see Patrick and Sharon Sharp in Los Angeles. They played hosts and guides to my first visit to the strange world of LA–a place that actually felt like another country to me. We visited the Little Tokyo area for lunch and snacks and then strolled through the Museum of Contemporary Art’s (MOCA) Naked Hollywood: Weegee in Los Angeles photography exhibition (Weegee was doing amazing stuff with photography!). We also enjoyed the sunset from the top of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel (a fascinating hotel with interesting designs and spaces, but is it really postmodern? I think that a better case could be made for Riverside’s Mission Inn in that respect). I also got to meet their very friendly cat, Tonks.

    I believe that the research trip (and my first trip to California for that matter) was a smashing success! I have many materials that I have notes on and many other materials that I need to review again. I also got to reconnect with friends and colleagues there: Pawel Frelik, Mark Biswas, and William Sun.

  • More Commentary About Taiwanese Home Guys

    Y’s friend Amy from Taiwan sent me a wonderful write-up about Taiwanese “Home Guys” awhile back, but I have neglected to publish it on Dynamic Subspace. I have pasted her extensive explanations below in English and Chinese, and I give her my thanks for taking the time to contribute her expertise on the Home Guy phenomena to an English-speaking audience. Below, Amy qualifies what I had wrote before about “actual” Home Guys and their relationship to Media Home Guys and Lucifer Home Guys. You can read more about Home Guys on my blog here and here.

    The term “Home-guy ” is came from the Japanese word “otaku”, originally referred to people who “over-indulged in comic books, animation, video-games , can not or just fear to contact with the real people(or opposite), and almost always stay in home. ”

    Because these people stay at home, with most of the money spent on animation products, they are general not pay attention to how they look. (also part of the reason is because they do not have too much experience of communicate with others, so no way of knowing how dressed up)

    Sometime:
    Too obsessed with animation and game → did not resonate with the people around or do not know how to get along with people around → frustration on the relationship →stay at home, do not want or Does not create a social relationship, or just talk to people who has the same enthusiasm about animation or video games → slovenly.
    Or:
    Do not good at relationships with people around → finding out animation, comics, games, are more interesting than real people → stay at home, do not want or Does not create a social relationship, or just talk to people who has the same enthusiasm about animation or video games → slovenly.

    In other words, only in full compliance with three conditions: “enthusiast about comic books,playing games than ordinary people “, “like stay at home, do not want to establish social relations, “”do not pay attention to their appearance, “can be most “otaku” means.

    However, in the media in Taiwan, as long as “love the cartoon or games ” or “dowdy” or “can’t be easy to fall into talk to the opposite sex, ” one of these three conditions are met (or even the media is that they meet the “unkempt looks” like) , will be considered “home-guy “.

    Even when TV show invited some “people who like anime or games” on the program, it is also meant to these people “dress up a little slovenly. ” Only to come more in line with the media to create stereotypes.This also affected the public’s perception, as long as animation or comic books than the average person to understand that it could easily be said, “Oh, you are such a home-guy! ”

    Therefore, the matter that “love the comic, animation, video-games ” has been twisted, in addition to the definition of the image of the media,there are many people in Taiwan are: like cartoons, comics, playing video games, but they are not always stay in home, or fear to communicate to others.

    They (I may call “Taiwan home-guy”) is the most common of the other features:
    a. interest in new technology.
    b. In the Internet,they are all great writers.but in the real conversation,they may not be a good talker.(but not exclusive to have a chat)
    c. against the war (except the game), and usually don’t like politics.
    d. have a open mind to everything.
    e. of the favorite things, even if not get any real benefit, but also willing to bet a considerable enthusiasm and energy to study.
    f. not a fan of outdoor activities and sports, most of the time would rather in static leisure: reading, such as in the coffee shop and so on.

    But in Taiwan media, they are all regarding as the “home-guy”.

    Of course, these people (including me), sometimes claimed as the “home-guy”, because sometimes it is the easiest way to make people understand your hobby, or sometimes just do not want to be a killjoy,or do not bother to explain so much with others.

    Call these people “actual home guy”, may not actually quite correct. But I can not think of a better term to replace that …

    2. Everything is from her personal point of view. Others may have different perspective on this phenomena.

    3. About Lucifer Chu and the related information why he is called the home guy is on wikipedia (see link).

    “Hot blood activities” = things that you are passionate or enthusiastic about. English course translations to Chinese and put online. Pro-death penalty and rallies. Public service persons die in the line of duty, and he tries to get people to be more aware of their sacrifice and donate money to help their families. A lot of things about him correspond with what is considered Taiwanese “homeness.” But because he come out to do these things, to be more public, he become an idol for some people on the web and they call him the “home god.” Celebrity shows or talk shows will invite him to go on tv, but like what Amy said about point b above, very often when he is on the tv show, he doesn’t talk in a very organized way, he couldn’t convey his ideas very clearly, the way he dresses himself corresponds with people’s stereotypes of home person. additionally, some motivations of his behavior do not seem to be that just. Sometimes, he does not seem to have a good capacity for criticism or toleration for other people’s viewpoints. This last point is more complicated than that. This has to do with 氣度 (chih du) or the capacity for taking in criticisms or different opinions, and how you react to those things. The Far-East Chinese English Dictionary defines it as 1) “spirit; air; bearing; manner” and 2) [more appropriate here] “capacity for tolerance.” Even sometimes, you can see his personal capacity for tolerance is not that great. This issue is debatable. Furthermore, there is debate online about Lucifer Chu’s role as spokesperson for home guys (see link). However, the media consider Chu the spokesperson or leader of the home guy movement.

    In Chinese:

    1、關於他文章裡說的三種home guy定義：media home guy 、actual home guy（我說的那部分）、Lucifer Home Guy。
    關於「actual home guy」這項，其實還有待商榷：

    「宅」（home-guy）這個名詞的起源來自於日本的「御宅族」（O-Taku），原本是指「過度沈迷於漫畫、動畫、遊戲與衍生周邊，而對真實人際接觸產生恐懼與挫折（或因果相反），最後導致足不出戶的人」。「御宅」在日本是「家」的意思。因為這類的人足不出戶，加上金錢多半花於動漫週邊產品，加上他們會沈迷研究於自己喜歡的事情，因此通常這種人對外表都很不注意（也有部分原因是因為沒有太多與別人接觸的經驗，所以無從得知怎麼打扮），甚至很邋遢、不修邊幅。

    簡單畫成流程圖是：

    太過沈迷動漫遊戲（因）—->跟周圍的人沒有共鳴或是不曉得怎麼跟周圍的人相處—->產生人際上的挫折—>足不出戶，不想或不會建立社交關係，或是只跟同類的動漫同好接觸（果）—>外表邋遢（果）。

    或是：

    因個性關係不曉得怎麼跟周圍的人相處（因）—->發覺動畫、漫畫、遊戲比跟真實人物相處更有趣—->足不出戶，不想或不會建立社交關係，或是只跟同類的動漫同好接觸（果）—>外表邋遢（果）。

    但是A等於B，並不代表B等於A。
    邋遢的人不一定就喜歡動漫遊戲，喜歡動漫遊戲的人也不一定就足不出戶。

    換句話說，只有全數符合了三種條件：「熱愛動漫遊戲超乎異於常人」、「足不出戶，不想或不會跟一般人建立社交關係」、「比一般人不注重自己外表」，才能算是最符合「御宅族」（O-Taku），這個語意。

    但在台灣媒體裡，卻只要「喜歡動漫遊戲」或「外表邋遢」或「不太敢跟異性講話」這三個條件符合其中一項（甚至對媒體來說只要符合「外表邋遢」就好），就會被認為是「宅」。台灣媒體根本沒弄清楚前後因果關係，就隨意亂用這個名詞。
    甚至有些綜藝節目邀請「喜歡動漫遊戲的人」上節目時，還故意要這些人「打扮得邋遢一點」。只為了更符合媒體想打造出來的刻板印象。
    而這也影響了社會大眾的觀感，只要對動畫或漫畫比一般人瞭解一點，很容易就會被說「你好宅喔！」（但被說的人也許只是愛看的東西跟說的人不一樣，也沒有邋遢，也沒有不想跟人接觸）

    所以「喜歡動漫遊戲」這件事情有點被污名化了，我那時候想說的是，除了媒體定義的形象，
    台灣還有非常多人是：喜歡看動畫、漫畫、玩電動遊戲，但卻不會足不出戶，也不會不想跟一般人交際。
    他們（我姑且稱之為台灣宅好了）大多數共通的其他特點是：
    a.對新科技與新技術也頗有興趣。
    b.在網路也許可以滔滔不絕，但在實際談話時卻不一定能口若懸河。（但不會排斥聊天）
    c.反對戰爭（遊戲裡的除外 XD），也不是很愛接觸政治。
    d.對很多社會上的事物都保持開放接受的態度。
    e.對喜愛的事物，即使不會得到任何實質益處，也願意投注相當大的熱情與心力去研究。
    f.不是很喜歡戶外活動與運動，大多時候寧可待在家裡，或是從事靜態的休閒：如在咖啡店讀書等等。

    所以，嚴格來說，這群人並不是「宅」，但在台灣他們卻被媒體（與一般人）霸道地規類到「宅」裡。

    對我來說，真正的「宅」這個字，應該只代表一種行為，那就是「因為某種原因，而不想與別人或社會接觸，選擇都待在家裡」這種行為，而原因可以是千百萬種，如在學校被欺負啊、失戀…等等。

    但在台灣媒體與一般大眾裡，已經形成了堅不可摧的「宅」的刻板印象，定義也廣泛而隨便，所以我說的「還有一種阿宅其實是….」，只是要解釋在媒體的定義裡，有些人其實並不是這樣的形象，而不是說「這樣的人才是真正的宅」。

    當然，我描述的這些人裡（包括我），有時也會自稱為「宅」，但其實那只是用來讓對方馬上瞭解「我對動漫電影很有興趣」，或有時候只是不想讓氣氛太僵，也懶得跟別人解釋這麼多（對方可能也不想聽 XD）。

    所以，要將我描述的人規類於「actual home guy」，其實是不太正確的。但我也想不出更好的名詞可以取代就是..。

    2、我所說的一切，都只是我個人的觀點，也許不同的人，對於這樣的現象都有不同的解釋。

    3、關於朱學恆，以及他被稱為「宅神」的相關資料，可見：
    http://zh.wikipedia.org/zh/%E6%9C%B1%E5%AD%B8%E6%81%92

    我很認可他的一些熱血行為（如麻省理工計畫、反對廢除死刑遊行、為颱風殉職警察發動募捐..等），其實他也有很多地方符合我前面所舉的一些台灣宅的特點。但是由於他跳出來做了一些事情，所以變成網路上開始有一些人崇拜他，叫他「宅神」，也開始有一些綜藝節目或政論談話節目找他去上電視，可是，正如同我前面講的特點b，很多時候，他上節目講述事情是很沒有條理的，要傳達的概念也不夠清楚，加上他的外表打扮正符合了一般人的刻板印象。另外，他有些行為的動機也並非總是那麼的正義凜然，甚至有時候可以感覺他這個人的氣度並不是很大….，這部分講起來很亂，總之頗有爭議就是。
    關於朱學恆的相關反面討論，可以看這串：
    http://komica40.dreamhosters.com/f1/read.php?key=1252679381

    不管怎樣，現在台灣媒體都認為「朱學恆=阿宅發言人或領袖」，而我想有很大多數的人是不認同這點的。